Shadowing Practice: If you think you're broke because you're lazy or stupid, watch this - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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You work hard.
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You work hard.
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YouTube vlogging is just so so hard.
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You're not stupid.
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The gap between you and your goal is simply work and it's hustle.
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So why are you still broke?
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In today's video I'm gonna tell you something
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that is either gonna make you a lot of money or seriously piss you off and honestly it's probably gonna do both.
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You see I'm gonna walk you through the five broken beliefs
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that quietly keep people stuck for years even without them realizing it
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and chances are you have at least one of them right now.
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Because most of you watching this aren't broke because you're lazy.
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And you're definitely not broke because you're stupid.
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You are broke because of what you believe about money.
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Look, I don't know how much you know about cars.
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Maybe you're not as much of a car geek as I am.
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But every single high performance car has something called an ECU.
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And that stands for Electronic Control Unit.
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It's pretty much the brain of the car.
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It decides how much power gets released,
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how hard the machine pushes.
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Look, I have cars in my garage that are genuinely dangerous.
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But if someone went in and tweaked that ECU,
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these cars would go into limp mode.
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And in that moment, all of that power,
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all of that engineering locked away,
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not because anything's broken, but because the system thinks it needs to protect itself from something that it doesn't trust yet.
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And your brain works exactly the same way.
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You see, most successful people aren't sitting there with some magical IQ that you don't have.
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Okay.
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I've met a lot of rich people,
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some incredibly smart, but a lot of them surprisingly average
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and a few that honestly genuinely make you question how they even got there in the first place.
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But what they all have in common is they think about money completely differently than regular people.
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And over time, I started to realize that building wealth isn't really an intelligence game.
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It's more of a game of beliefs,
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the beliefs you have around money,
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around risk, around opportunity, and even yourself.
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And your belief system is your ECU.
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The problem is that most of you watching this are running terrible settings.
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You are basically sitting in limp mode without even realizing it.
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And I'm going to fix that for you today while we go on this little night drive.
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So with that being said, let's get into it.
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Now, the first broken belief is probably responsible for killing more potential than anything else in this video.
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And what makes it dangerous is that it actually feels productive in the moment.
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So let's see if you recognize yourself here.
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You want to start a business and immediately your brain starts sprinting 10 steps ahead.
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Well, what if I don't understand taxes?
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What if I need employees?
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What if I can't manage people?
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What if it scales too quickly?
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What if I fail?
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My friend, you haven't even made your first dollar yet.
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Yet you're sitting here trying to solve problems that don't even exist.
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And while you're busy creating all these imaginary scenarios in your head,
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the one thing that would actually move your life forward never gets done.
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And I've noticed something very funny over the years because people assume uncertainty disappears once you start making money.
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They think that there's some magical point along the journey where you wake up and you suddenly think,
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right, I finally understand this whole business thing now.
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That never happens.
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That point never comes.
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Let me tell you from personal experience.
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When I was making nothing,
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I had no clue what I was doing.
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At $10,000 a month, no clue.
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At $100,000 a month, same thing.
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At a million dollars a month,
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honestly, I still felt the same way.
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The uncertainty never really goes away.
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You just become more comfortable operating without having to have every single answer
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and eventually you realize something that most of the things you spend months worrying about never actually ended up happening.
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And the few things that did actually end up happening,
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well, you figured them out.
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OK, not because you were prepared,
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but because reality forced you to become prepared.
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Nobody learns how to manage a team before they have one.
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Nobody learns about taxes before making money.
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No one knows exactly what they're doing before they begin.
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You solve problems when those problems become real.
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So if you can take away one thing from this,
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let it be this.
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Stop trying to solve for level 10 while you are still at level one.
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And that brings me to the second broken belief.
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And this one, actually, now that I think about it,
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might even be more dangerous than the first one because it's got nothing to do with action at all.
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It's got to do about how you fundamentally think about money in of itself.
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You see, this broken belief,
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I wish someone had explained to me earlier in life.
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Most people have a really strange relationship with money.
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And I don't mean they spend too much or they save too little.
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I mean, they attach emotions to it.
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They make every decision around it worse.
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Look, we all grew up hearing things like money changes people.
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Rich people are greedy.
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More money, more problems.
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And after hearing stuff like that for years,
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you don't even realize it.
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But eventually, you start attaching meaning to money itself.
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You start treating it like it's good or bad,
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like it has some sort of personality.
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It doesn't.
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Okay, money is infrastructure.
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It's just a tool.
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That's it.
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Look, let me explain it like this.
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Think about electricity for a second.
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You don't have an emotional relationship with electricity. Do you?
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You don't sit there staring at a light switch and go,
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wow, electricity is amazing.
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Yes, you understand it.
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Yes, you use it.
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Yes, it serves a purpose.
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And that relationship you have with electricity is the same way money should work.
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Okay.
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Look, I've noticed something very interesting over the years.
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The people who build serious wealth usually aren't the people obsessing over money every five minutes.
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I know that sounds funny to hear.
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It's not the people refreshing their bank account 10 times a day.
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They are not emotionally attached to every number moving up or down because when you are emotionally attached to money,
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you start making emotional decisions and emotional decisions are never a good thing.
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Look, you start to panic when things go down.
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You become overconfident when things go up.
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You spend when you should save.
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You save when you should invest.
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And usually those decisions end up costing you more than whatever number was sitting in your bank account.
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Look, I get it.
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I remember in the earlier stages of my career,
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I remember checking my bank account constantly.
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Every increase felt amazing.
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Every drop felt painful.
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But eventually I started to realize that the problem was never the number itself.
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It was the meaning that I was attaching to the number.
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So here's what I want you to do.
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I want you to open up your banking app right now.
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I want you to look at your balance and just pay attention to what you feel.
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Is it stress?
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Is it relief?
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Is it excitement?
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Is it anxiety?
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Whatever it is, label it, okay?
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Write it down because that reaction you just had tells you more than you think.
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You cannot fix a relationship you have not diagnosed properly.
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And that actually brings me to the third broken belief.
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And this one's quite scary because a lot of what you think is you
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is really just beliefs and patterns that you have picked up over the years.
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Look, let me ask you this.
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If no one on earth could see your life,
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no Instagram, no friends, no strangers,
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no one to impress, would you still buy the same things?
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The same apartment, the same watch,
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the same car, the same clothes?
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Because here's something that I've noticed whilst living in a lot of these large metropolitan cities.
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London, Dubai, New York.
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A lot of financial decisions people make aren't actually financial decisions.
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They're social decisions.
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People tell themselves they're buying something because they deserve it.
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Okay.
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Or because it will motivate them or because they finally want to enjoy life.
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But underneath it, a lot of times it's actually something else.
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Okay.
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They're just performing.
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And it's unfortunate because the audience that they're performing to cares a lot less than they think they do.
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Okay.
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Now, before someone clips this up and says,
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oh, Eman says, don't buy nice things while I'm riding around in a Rolls Royce.
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Look, I'm not saying don't buy nice things.
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I like nice things.
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I like fast cars.
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I like nice watches.
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I like traveling lavishly.
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I don't think there's anything noble and pretending as if money doesn't matter.
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But there is a huge,
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huge difference between buying something because it genuinely improves your life
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or because you genuinely love it compared to buying something
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because you want to signal status or before you prioritize the other things in life that matter.
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Look, let's not even talk about property,
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let alone property for myself.
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I bought my mother a $4 million house cash,
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no loan, no mortgage, nothing cash before I bought my first car.
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So then yeah, later on in my career,
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if I want to buy nice things or buy nice toys, good.
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I deserve it.
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And you deserve it too.
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But just make sure A,
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it's for you and B,
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make sure it's done appropriately.
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And at the right time in your career,
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you need to understand the place it comes from.
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Okay.
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Those are two very different ways to go about your purchases.
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Okay.
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One comes from enjoyment or celebration.
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And the one comes from insecurity
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and insecurity gets expensive very fast i can tell you
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that as i said i made tens of millions of dollars
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before i bought my first car now honestly looking back i
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actually wish i'd bought a car earlier i think like i actually think
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that would have been good for me
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and i probably should have treated myself earlier
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but maybe the reason i didn't was honestly i was just genuinely loving building
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so much okay i enjoyed building i enjoyed seeing the numbers go up okay
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and i think that's simply because when your motivation becomes internal okay you stop needing these external reminders that you're successful.
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And that's what a lot of people miss.
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Okay.
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If you're making your first $100,000,
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your biggest problem shouldn't be whether you should upgrade your car or not.
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Your biggest problems are a lot more boring.
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Okay.
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Renewing that client, hiring that first employee,
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launching a new marketing funnel.
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Trust me, one bad month can still hurt you.
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Okay.
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One client leaving can still hurt you.
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Those are real problems, not trying to impress some people online.
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Okay.
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So here's what I want you to do.
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I want you to open your banking app again and go through your last month's spending.
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Find one purchase and just ask yourself honestly,
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would I have still bought this if no one on earth could have seen it?
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Because that's usually where the truth is hiding.
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Okay, you don't need to cancel everything,
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but name it, call it out,
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write it down, because the moment you can label the pattern,
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you are already in the process of breaking it.
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And that brings me to the fourth broken belief.
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And this one gets interesting because on the surface, it actually looks responsible.
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It's the belief that you tell your grandma over dinner and she immediately nods and says,
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good, better safe than sorry.
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And I promise there's an actual point I'm trying to make.
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So let me ask you this.
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How many decisions in your life right now are being made because you're trying to avoid losing rather than trying to win?
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Think about it.
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Okay.
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People stay in jobs they hate because it feels safe,
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because it comes with health insurance,
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because their parents told them that stability matters.
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Because look, I already spent four years on getting a degree and then they don't start their own thing because,
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well, you know, what if it doesn't work out?
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They don't post content because they're scared that the people they went to school with might judge them.
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Oh, well, they don't move countries.
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They don't ask that girl out.
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They don't take risks, not because they can,
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but because they are so busy playing defense all the time.
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And look, some defense is good.
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You should wear a seatbelt.
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You should have savings.
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You shouldn't put your net worth into some random crypto coin that some guy on Twitter told you about.
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Okay, look, I'm not saying be reckless,
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but I did realize something quite early on.
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No one builds an extraordinary life by only trying not to lose.
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Okay, it doesn't work because when you're constantly playing defense,
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your brain starts optimizing for comfort instead of opportunity.
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You stop asking what's the upside and you start asking what's the least painful option?
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Those are very different questions.
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Look, when I moved my base to Dubai six years ago,
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people thought I was insane.
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When I started YouTube 11 years ago,
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people thought I was insane.
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When I dropped out of school at the age of 17,
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people thought I was insane.
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If I had spent my entire life trying to remove all the risks before making a move,
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I would probably still be sat twiddling my thumbs waiting for permission.
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The people you look up to, they're not fearless, okay?
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I have met more than enough successful people to tell you that.
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These people still feel uncertainty.
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They still doubt themselves.
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They still get anxious.
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The difference is they don't allow that fear to make the final decision because at some point,
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you realize something.
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Playing defense only protects what you already have.
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Playing offense is what actually changes your life.
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And the worst part is that people spend their entire lives protecting a life that they don't even like.
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And that brings us onto the fifth and final belief.
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And I wanted to end on this one because out of everything that we've covered today,
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this is the one that's probably cost people the most.
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And look, we all know how the saying goes, time is money.
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Look, I need you to be really honest with yourself for a second.
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How many times in the last year have you convinced yourself
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that But this next thing was going to be the thing to finally change your life.
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The new business model you saw on YouTube,
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that new AI tool that someone on TikTok said was replacing their entire company.
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The new guy on Twitter posting a screenshot saying he made $83,000 in 14 days doing something that you've never heard of before.
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Look every few weeks, it's something different.
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And every time you see it,
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your brain lights up like it's a casino machine.
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This is it.
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This is what I've been missing.
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Everything changes now.
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So you start learning more about it.
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You update your Instagram bio.
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You tell three of your friends that you're starting something new.
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And then a week later you quit.
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And by the way, it's not because you actually gave effort and it didn't work out.
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It's because the excitement wore off and the reality showed up because here's the truth that no one wants to hear.
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Making money honestly is painfully, painfully repetitive.
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It's boring.
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Okay.
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It's answering the same emails,
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fixing the same problems, having the same conversations,
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doing the same thing over and over again,
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long after the dopamine disappears.
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Look, when I first started my agency,
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I was doing outreach sitting in school,
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literally sitting in class with my laptop open while my teacher was talking.
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During lunch, I wasn't hanging out with anyone.
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OK, I would sit there reading business books or doing more outreach.
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Then I'd get home and edit videos for my agency clients.
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It took me hours and hours and hours.
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OK, no flashy TikTok montages,
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no fancy Lamborghini in my car,
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no watch me make 100K in seven days just doing the same boring shit over
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and over again for months before anything meaningful happened.
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And that's what most people miss.
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They think they have a business model problem.
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Most of the time they don't.
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They have an attention problem
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because the person who sticks to one proven thing for five years will absolutely destroy the person who switches every six months,
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every single time.
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And here's the thing.
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It's not because they're smarter,
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not because they found some sort of magical opportunity,
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but because eventually repetition turns into skill and skill eventually starts looking like talent from the outside.
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So look, before you click off this video,
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I want you to promise me one thing.
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Figure out which one of these five beliefs is costing you the most right now.
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Not all five, just one.
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Because most people watch a video like this and think, that was interesting.
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And then they do absolutely nothing differently tomorrow.
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Please do not do that.
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Pick the one that hits you the hardest
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and pay attention to it for the next week because once you become aware of these things,
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you start noticing them everywhere.
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You notice yourself trying to solve problems that don't exist yet.
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You notice yourself chasing the next shiny opportunity.
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You notice yourself making decisions that don't even make sense.
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And eventually you realize something.
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You never really had a capability problem.
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You had a settings problem.
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That ECU example I gave you, that's you.
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Okay, you were just running on terrible software.
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Now, look, I know today's video leaned very heavy into mindset
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and psychology and a lot less into like actual practical money-making advice.
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So I know you're sat there thinking, all right, cool.
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Well, how do I actually start this?
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Well, I strongly suggest you go check the link in the description.
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there's a free YouTube video I created earlier in the year.
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It's probably my most popular video this year
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and it breaks down a bunch of different business models
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and it compares the pros and cons to each
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and it will show you based on your personality type which one makes sense for you to move forward with.
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I strongly recommend you go check out that YouTube video after this.
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It should point you in the right direction and with
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that being said as always I'm watching from afar and I'm rooting for you.
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Context & Background
The speaker in this video shares insights on personal finance and the common misconceptions that prevent individuals from achieving their financial goals. With an engaging and relatable narrative, they challenge the belief that financial struggles stem from laziness or a lack of intelligence. Instead, the emphasis is placed on one’s mindset and beliefs about money, likening it to a car’s Electronic Control Unit (ECU) which optimizes performance based on its settings. This mindset can either propel individuals forward or hold them back, similar to how a vehicle operates under different conditions.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- You’re not stupid. – A reminder that intelligence does not solely dictate success.
- It’s all about your beliefs. – Highlighting the power of one’s mindset in achieving goals.
- Building wealth isn’t an intelligence game. – Suggesting that success is more about perception than intellect.
- You might be running terrible settings. – An analogy for self-limiting beliefs that impede progress.
- Let’s tweak your mindset. – Encouragement to reassess and adjust your beliefs to unlock potential.
Step-by-step Shadowing Guide
Shadowing is an effective technique to improve your English speaking practice. To tackle this video's complexity, follow these steps:
- Watch and Listen: Start by viewing the video without subtitles. Focus on the speaker's tone, intonation, and pacing. This will help you familiarize yourself with the vocabulary and expressions used, making it easier to learn English with YouTube.
- Read Along: Next, watch the video again with subtitles. Pause after each phrase and repeat it aloud. Focus on mimicking the pronunciation and rhythm of the speaker to enhance your shadow speech skills.
- Break it Down: Use the top phrases listed above. Take one phrase at a time and practice it in different contexts. For instance, “You’re not stupid” can be turned into a motivational statement when encouraging a friend.
- Record Yourself: Try recording your shadowing attempts. Playback the recordings to identify areas for improvement, ensuring you’re developing your IELTS speaking practice skills effectively.
- Engage with Others: Join discussion groups or language exchange platforms. Use phrases from the video in conversations, which will reinforce what you've learned about money mindset. Engaging with others will greatly enhance your English speaking practice.
By investing time in this shadowing technique, you’ll not only improve your language skills but also gain valuable insights from the content, enriching both your vocabulary and mindset.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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